New Zealand goldfish survive 134 days without food

Two goldfish have survived without food for more than four months in New Zealand.

The fish were stranded in a Christchurch downtown office with no-one to feed them after the February earthquake, The AP reports.

Vicky Thornley was given the go-ahead to return to the office on July 6 to pick up her belongings. She discovered that the goldfish were alive when an earthquake-recovery worker shouted: "Hey, there are fish here, and they're alive!"

"I was astounded," she recalled.

A curator at an American aquarium theorised that bacteria in the tank helped keep the water clean enough to inhabit, while algae on the rocks and tank walls may have provided a sufficient amount of nutrition for the fish to survive.

Thornley took the goldfish home for her 5-year-old son Joshua. He named them after the Scooby Doo characters Shaggy and Daphne, and they now share the same tank as his two other fish Scooby and Fred.